Russia Abandons Space Station Despite Biden’s Pleading

R ussia will pull out of the International Space Station (ISS) long before the Biden administration wanted, in what seems to be a bid to embarrass America.

“You know that we are working within the framework of international cooperation at the International Space Station,” Yury Borisov, the new chief of Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, told Vladimir Putin. “Undoubtedly, we will fulfill all our obligations to our partners, but the decision to leave the station after 2024 has been made.”

Russian space officials claim they will build their own space station instead of collaborating with NASA. Russia may take its space expertise to China, remaking the dynamics of global space cooperation. China plans to have its own space station operational by the end of the year. The possibility of the two nations eventually creating a functionally joint Russian–Chinese station is real.

During President Barack Obama’s administration, NASA canceled plans to return to the moon, supervised the decommissioning of the Space Shuttle, and set the Mars program back years . . . in order to hike the space agency’s budget for environmental programs by 63 percent. This policy vacuum in space is being filled by the Chinese, who are pouring billions into such ambitious scientific and military space programs, and eagerly seeking Russian help.

“After years of investment and strategy, China is well on its way to becoming a space superpower—and maybe even a dominant one,” reported Popular Science. “Now, satellites guide Chinese aircraft, missiles, and drones, while watching over crop yields and foreign military bases. The growing number of missions involving Chinese rockets and taikonauts [astronauts] are a source of immense national pride.”

NASA administrator Bill Nelson has even accused China of planning to take over the moon in addition to militarizing space and stealing U.S. space technology. “We must be very concerned that China is landing on the moon and saying: ‘It’s ours now and you stay out,’” he said recently.

Roscosmos has been looking to China to be a supplier of vital space industry components and a partner in missions following the invasion of Ukraine. The two countries have signed cooperation agreements for several new missions and are planning to work together to build their own moonbase.

The Biden administration just recently tried to prevent the two authoritarian states from working together in orbit, looking to Putin’s Russia for help returning NASA astronauts to the ISS. Biden even pledged to allow Russian cosmonauts to travel on new American SpaceX rockets. He announced last December that his administration “has committed to continuing station operations through 2030” in a desperate bid to keep Russia in the program.

It seems that the Russians have decisively rejected Biden’s offer.

The ISS is a partnership among the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan, and the eleven countries working through the European Space Agency. The station, however, is primarily composed of the Russian Orbital Segment and the U.S. Orbital Segment. The U.S. segment powers the facility while the Russian segment’s engines are necessary to regularly maintain and adjust the space station’s orbit. The design was meant to ensure that the station cannot function without the cooperation of both countries.

Some experts believe that the U.S. can maintain the orbit without Russian cooperation. “It is not easy, but technically it is possible,” Pavel Luzin, a Russian military and space analyst, claimed. “The U.S. and other partners do have all necessary capabilities and technologies for this.” Northrop Grumman or SpaceX could step in to fill the orbit-correcting role currently played by the Russian Progress spacecraft, or the U.S. might try to strike a deal to pay Russia for its orbital upkeep services.

American taxpayers paid for 84 percent of the cost to build the ISS when counting the price of the launches needed, while Russia paid about 8 percent.

Russia has repeatedly threatened to leave the ISS project, but this is the first time it has actually stated it has an active plan to abandon the station.

Borisov’s predecessor, Dmitry Rogozin, repeatedly threatened to do so amid crippling U.S. and European sanctions over the war in Ukraine, before he was ousted earlier this month. He said Russia was considering building modules for the Chinese station and has already booted the U.S. from its planned Venera-D mission to Venus. Roscomos is suspending cooperation with European countries as well.

Known for his brashness, Rogozin was removed from his position but seems to remain in favor with Putin and is rumored to be Putin’s top choice to oversee the eastern territories in Ukraine seized by Russian forces. Rogozin previously stated that Russia is considering building modules for the Chinese station and potentially even a moonbase.

“In a situation like this we can’t supply the United States with our world’s best rocket engines,” Rogozin said while in charge of Russia’s space agency, to state television. “Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I don’t know what.”

Former NASA associate administrator Doug Loverro believes the timing of Rogozin’s replacement was meant to indicate that Russia is serious about withdrawing from the ISS: “I think you can read this as a pre-planned follow-on to replacing Rogozin. If he had said this, it would look like just one more bluster statement. But this is the new guy, presumably very close to Putin, saying this one week after taking over. I think it is real.”

If the threat is real, then the Biden administration has utterly failed to maintain its desired continuation of space cooperation with Roscosmos and failed to prevent the Russian and Chinese space agencies from drawing closer together. That level of failure in the space-policy realm is, pardon the pun, out of this world.